BS 
2505 
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THE 

STORY OF PAUL'S LIFE 



By 

Professor Edward Increase Bosworth, A.M., D.D. 

Dean of Oberlin Theologicat Seminary ; Author 
of " Studies in the Acts and Epistles," " Studies 
in the Teaching of Jesus and his Apostles," 
" Studies in the Life of Jesus Christ " 



The Sunday School Times Company 
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.313 

Copyright, 1909, 
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THE STORY OF PAUL'S LIFE 



A BOY IN THE TARSUS GHETTO 

OT many years after the hum- 
ble carpenter's wife tended her 
first-born in the manger of a 
Bethlehem khan (inn), an old 
aristocratic family of Pharisees welcomed 
a baby boy into their ample home in the 
ghetto of Tarsus, the beautiful capital of 
the great Roman province, Cilicia. They 
were of the tribe of Benjamin, and gave the 
boy the name of their famous tribal ancestor, 
King Saul. The father was also a Roman 
citizen, and gave his young son in addition 
the Roman name, Paulus. The family pos- 
sessed Tarsian citizenship as well, and must 
therefore have been sufficiently well-to-do 
to meet the property qualification for citizen- 
ship in Tarsus. As loyal Tarsians (Acts 
21:39), they were probably somewhat 
influenced by the distinguished university 
and general educational atmosphere of the 

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city, even though cherishing conservative 
Pharisaic family traditions (Acts 23:6). 

In the home this Pharisaic family, unlike 
many far from the fatherland, still spoke the 
Aramaic of Palestine as well as Greek ("a 
Hebrew of Hebrews, " Phil. 3:5). And in 
accordance with Jewish thrift, Saul, like 
other boys of the ghetto, was taught a trade. 
He learned to cut and stitch the coarse can- 
vas of the province into tents (Acts 18: 3). 

A STUDENT IN THE) HOLY CITY 

At the age of perhaps thirteen or fifteen, 
the lad left the brilliant city with the clear, 
beautiful river running through it and the 
fertile plains lying about it, and came to the 
rather bleak and waterless Judaean plateau 
of the fatherland. But he came to the city 
of his dreams, the Holy City ! The sensitive, 
highstrung lad wandered through the beauti- 
ful white marble colonnades about Jehovah's 
House. He saw the smoke rise from the 
great altar, heard the silver trumpets of the 
priests calling to prayer, saw the richly robed 
temple officials, and kneeled with the mul- 
titudes on the pavement at the hour of 
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incense. He heard the great rabbis teach 
in the synagogues. The influence of his 
family secured for him a place among the 
students of one of the most famous of them. 
With other ardent young Pharisees, he gave 
himself up in passionate devotion to the 
study of the law of Moses. The dignified, 
appreciative patrons of budding rabbinic 
genius smiled upon the young Benjamite 
from Tarsus when they saw him outstripping 
his fellow-students (Gal. i : 14). 

A FIERCE DEFENDER OF THE LAW 

Probably Saul from time to time made 
long visits to the Tarsus home. On his 
return from one of these visits, he found 
Jerusalem agitated over a strange religious 
madness that had come upon some of its 
inhabitants. A deluded Messianic aspirant 
had gained a large popular following. The 
fanatic had been a severe critic of the rabbis, 
and was himself reported to have been lax 
in the observance of the holy law. The men 
who were Saul's ideals of religious propriety 
and orthodoxy had publicly declared Jesus 
to be in league with Satan. God had 

5 



endorsed this declaration by openly cursing 
him, — Jesus had met his death in naked 
shame on the accursed cross. 

His followers, however, instead of being 
dispersed by this catastrophe, pretended 
that God had raised him from the dead, and 
began industriously to organize a rapidly 
spreading Messianic movement in the name 
of Jesus. Many of the adherents of this new 
movement denied any lack of reverence for 
the law, but one of the most persuasive of 
their leaders, a man named Stephen, seemed 
surely to have asserted that Jesus would 
return to destroy the temple and abrogate 
its sacred ritual. The supreme court of the 
nation promptly put him to death, and 
young Rabbi Saul, who had been prominent 
in securing his execution, began a most 
rigorous campaign of extermination through- 
out the city. Every day he was busily 
engaged in the synagogue courts passion 
ately calling upon Nazarenes to curse Jesus 
or die (Acts 26: 11). When the movement 
seemed to be thoroughly demoralized in 
Jerusalem, Saul determined to visit the 
ghetto of every large city to which any of 



I 

these renegade enemies of the law might 
have fled, and rid it of the Nazarene pest. 

the transforming interview with jesus 
The first city which Rabbi Saul proposed 
to visit was Damascus. But just before he 
reached the city, he had an experience that 
absolutely and permanently transformed 
him. He saw Jesus himself standing in 
glory unmistakably Messianic on the thresh- 
old of his soul, and heard his voice in 
homely Aramaic speech (Acts 26: 14) re- 
sounding through all the inner chambers of 
his being. Jesus was indeed alive as the 
Nazarenes had said, and was therefore 
God's Messiah. To Rabbi Saul's amaze- 
ment, Jesus did not destroy him on the spot, 
nor did he even blind him for life, but he 
treated him with kindness, and in the days 
immediately following produced in him the 
conviction that he was to be honored with 
important responsibility for the propagation 
of the Messianic movement. This filled the 
young rabbi with profound gratitude. He 
then and there became " Jesus Christ's bond- 
slave." Moreover, his experience with Jesus 

7 



turned out to be no temporary interview, 
but the beginning of a permanent sense of 
the spiritual presence of Jesus, which he car- 
ried with him through all subsequent years. 
This initial interview with Jesus seems to 
have occurred a year or two after the death 
of Jesus, — that is, in the year A. d. 30 or 31. 

AN KVANGBUST AMONG HIS COUNTRYMEN 

Rabbi Saul at once began to speak with 
enthusiasm for the Nazarenes to his coun- 
trymen in the Damascus synagogues, but 
soon withdrew into Arabia (Gal. 1:17), — 
perhaps some portion of Arabia that was in 
the immediate vicinity of Damascus. He 
soon returned to Damascus from this short 
sojourn in Arabia, and three years after the 
interview with Jesus went back again to the 
Holy City (Gal. 1:18). The purpose of this 
visit to Jerusalem was twofold. He wished 
to communicate with Peter, the leader of 
the Nazarenes (Gal. 1:18). He probably 
wished to describe to Peter his sense of 
appointment by Jesus to important respon- 
sibility in connection with the Messianic 
movement, and to come to some under- 
8 



i 



standing with Peter about the discharge of 
this responsibility. Furthermore, it seemed 
to him that he could, by the story of his 
Damascus experience, win the rabbis of 
Jerusalem to the new movement. In this 
latter expectation he was bitterly dis- 
appointed (Acts 22:17-20). After only 
two weeks (Gal. 1: 18), he was obliged to 
leave the city in order to avoid assassination 
(Acts 9: 29). He went back to his friends 
in Tarsus. If his father was still living, the 
interview must have been a painful one. 
His father felt that the money spent on his 
son's education had been far worse than 
wasted. Saul had disgraced the proud 
family, disappointed their love, and outraged 
their deepest religious convictions. 

What the young Nazarene rabbi did in 
these next years is not clear. He evidently 
preached in Syria and Cilicia (Gal. 1:21), 
and probably for ten or twelve years (a. d. 
34-44). This preaching was mainly among 
Jews, for the author of Acts says nothing 
about Saul's connection with Gentile evan- 
gelization at this time, although the book of 
Acts purports to show how Gentile evan- 

9 



gelization began. Saul's own account of his 
life in the first chapter of Galatians is some- 
times thought to indicate that he did begin 
extensive work among Gentiles immediately 
after the Damascus experience. The narra- 
tive in Galatians, however, is extremely 
condensed, and does not necessarily demand 
such an interpretation. Saul had learned 
in Damascus that he was to be connected 
with some general turning of the Gentile 
world to the Messianic movement of Jesus. 
He would naturally have thought that the 
Gentile world would come into the Messianic 
movement as Jewish proselytes. The twelve 
apostles evidently thought that Jesus' com- 
mand to disciple all nations (Matt. 28: 19) 
would be fulfilled by making Jewish Chris- 
tian proselytes of them, and they waited 
before beginning to obey the command for 
some general turning of Gentiles to Judaism. 
It would naturally have seemed to them that 
they could not urge Gentiles to become 
Jewish Christian proselytes until the Jews 
themselves, as a nation, had identified them- 
selves with Jesus' Messianic movement. 
This was probably Saul's view also. 
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He doubtless often found in his synagogue 
audiences a little group of Gentiles who 
worshiped Jehovah without becoming Jew- 
ish proselytes. Perhaps he discovered that 
they were interested in his message about 
the Messianic kingdom of Jesus, and he may 
have encouraged them to think that they 
too could believe in Jesus. According to 
the author of Acts there were certain ven- 
turesome preachers who did just this in one 
great Syrian city, Antioch (Acts n : 19-21). 
Gentile Christians appear a little later in 
other parts of Syria and Cilicia (Acts 15 : 23), 
and they may have been a by-product of 
Saul's preaching, as well as of the preaching 
of these other men whom the author of Acts 
brings into prominence, and who probably 
preached in other cities than Antioch. But 
in the main, these years (a. d, 34-44) were 
spent among his own countrymen, preaching 
in many synagogues and gradually making 
the readjustment in his Pharisaic theology 
necessitated by his new Christian viewpoint. 
Many of the hardships mentioned in 2 Cor- 
inthians 11: 24-27 may have been endured 
in this period. He suffered shipwreck on 

11 



some coasting vessel (v. 25). He was 
slowly acquiring the experience that fitted 
him for twenty years of action to follow, 
more vital and far-reaching in its influence 
upon the life of the world than has been the 
action of any man who has lived since. 

THE APOSTLE) TO THE GENTILE WORLD 
These years of preparatory evangelization 
terminated in a year of rich experience with 
the large church in Antioch (Acts 1 1 : 25,26), 
whose membership included both Christian 
Jews and a considerable number of Christian 
Gentiles who, though not Jewish proselytes, 
had been regular attendants upon the Jewish 
synagogue before they ever heard of Chris- 
tianity, From this church as a new center, 
Saul began his great work as an apostle to 
the Gentile world. 

In the Roman Province Galatia. — A com- 
pany of Antioch brothers stood on the wharf 
and waved farewell to Saul and Barnabas, 
and the latter's young kinsman, John Mark 
of Jerusalem. The travelers preached their 
way through the Jewish communities of the 
lumber camps and mining towns of Cyprus, 



the old island home of Barnabas (Acts 4 : 36) 
and the scene of some previous Christian 
preaching (Acts 11:20). After an exciting 
experience with a Roman procurator, they 
sailed across to the mainland (Acts 13 : 4-13)* 
There Paul found his health breaking, but 
rather than return to Antioch he determined 
to search for more healthful surroundings 
in the highlands of South Galatia (Gal. 4: 
13). John Mark, who perhaps shared the 
prejudice of the Jerusalem Christians against 
Paul (Acts 9:26), and also resented the 
increasing leadership of Paul in a group of 
p which his honored kinsman Barnabas seemed 
to him to be rightful leader, was not in a 
mood to follow a sick man on any wild chase 
after health through the brigand-infested 
passes and swollen streams of the Taurus 
mountains. He consequently returned to 
Jerusalem. 

In four great cities of South Galatia, and 
their outlying districts, Paul and Barnabas 
established Christian churches. At first 
they preached only to Jews and to the 
Jehovah-worshiping Gentiles in the syna- 
gogue, as they had learned to do in Syria, 

13 



But here in South Galatia, a§ Professor 
Ramsay has shown, the author of Acts 
represents Paul and Barnabas to have dis- 
covered that any Gentile without previous 
connection with the synagogue, and without 
expectation of future connection with it, 
could nevertheless become a Christian 
(Acts 13:44-49). This work in Galatia 
probably occurred between the years A. d* 
45 and 49, 

Rumors of the radical step taken by Paul 
and Barnabas greatly disturbed an ultra 
conservative minority in the Jerusalem 
church. They raised the cry: ''The Mes- 
siah's Kingdom for the Messiah's People!" 
and started out forthwith on a campaign to 
convince all Gentile Christians that their 
Christian hope was vain unless by circum- 
cision they were incorporated into the body 
of the Messiah's people (Acts 15 : 1 , 2). This 
determined band of narrow-minded enthu- 
siasts was stopped by Paul and Barnabas 
at Antioch on the Orontes, and was per- 
suaded to submit the matter to the leading 
Nazarenes to be assembled in Jerusalem 
for its consideration. This Jerusalem meet* 
14 



ing, held probably in the year A. D. 48 of 
49, declared decisively against the contention 
of this minority (Acts 15:22-29), They 
seem to have left it uncertain, however , 
whether uncircumcised Gentile Christians 
might not be better Christians if they should 
be circumcised, and whether uncircumcised 
Gentile Christians could expect to enjoy 
free social intercourse with Jewish Christians, 
The first of these uncertainties led, in South 
Galatia, to the situation discussed in the 
Epistle to the Galatians, and the second to 
the misunderstanding and severe reproaches 
alluded to in Galatians 2: 11-14. 

In the Roman Provinces Macedonia and 
A chaia.— During a period of between two 
and three years following the Jerusalem 
Council alluded to above, Paul, assisted 
part of the time at least by Luke, Silas, and 
Timothy, carried on extensive operations 
among the Gentiles of Macedonia and 
Achaia (Acts 16-18). He selected strategic- 
ally located cities. In each case his work 
began naturally in the ghetto, where a pre- 
pared audience always awaited him, but it 
soon disconnected itself from the synagogue, 

15 



In Philippi he gathered a group of Christians, 
small but always peculiarly sympathetic 
with him and his needs (Phil, i : 3-5 ; 2 : 12 ; 
4: 15-18)* A larger group was formed in 
the great commercial center, Thessalonica, 
which quickly became famous all through 
the Levant and beyond (1 Thess. 1:8). 
Paul was driven out of this city by its 
officials before his work was done, and 
slipped away to the quiet town of Berea, 
hoping soon to have opportunity to return 
to Thessalonica and complete his work, but 
" Satan hindered 5 ' him (1 Thess. 2: 17, 18). 
Driven out from Berea by plots of assassina- 
tion, he spent a few weeks in Athens, 
preaching in the ghetto and debating with 
the university professors and students in 
the agora, but with little result (Acts 17: 17, 
18, 32-34). From the university city he 
went on to the commercial metropolis, 
Corinth. He came to the great city with 
many misgivings, especially after his com- 
parative failure in the university town 
(1 Cor. 2: 1-3). He had reason to feel mis- 
givings, for it was the most difficult piece of 
work he ever attempted. Once in its course 
16 



his magnificent courage failed him. He 
was about to leave the city, fearing assassi- 
nation or lynching, but his Lord made him 
stay (Acts 18:9, 10), and finally he won 
here his chief apostolic triumph. 

During this period he wrote from Corinth 
his two letters to the Thessalonian Chris- 
tians, and at the close of the period, from 
the home church in Syrian Antioch, his 
indignant but tender letter to the Galatian 
churches (unless, indeed, this letter was 
written in Athens or Corinth, before those 
to the Thessalonians). 

In the Roman Province Asia. — Paul had 
long planned to work in Asia, but had not 
felt that God was ready to send him there 
(Acts 16:6). Now for about three years 
(Acts 20:31), perhaps from a. d. 52 to 55, 
Paul conducted a campaign with Ephesus 
as his headquarters, which affected the life 
of the entire province (Acts 19 : 10). During 
this period the headstrong church in Corinth, 
Paul's perplexity as well as his pride, made 
him perhaps the most serious trouble of his 
life. This trouble may have had something 
to do with producing the attack of illness, 

17 



from which for a time he had no hope of 
recovering (2 Cor. 1 : 8-10). Pharisaic Chris- 
tians, presumably from Jerusalem, and one 
especially offensive man in particular (2 Cor. 
11:4), appeared in Corinth, and nearly per- 
suaded the church to disown all connection 
with Paul. From Paul's letters to the 
Corinthians, one written from Ephesus and 
the other from Macedonia, it seems that 
Paul sent several messengers to Corinth, 
and made one flying visit himself. He, or 
more probably his messenger, Timothy, was 
grievously insulted by some member of the 
church, and for a time the church sym- 
pathized with the offender. A very vigorous 
letter from Paul, which for a time he 
regretted writing, and of which the last four 
chapters of our 2 Corinthians are perhaps 
a portion, brought them to terms (2 Cor. 
7:5-12; 2:5-10). 

The winter succeeding this vigorous cor- 
respondence Paul spent in Corinth (Acts 
20:2,3). From a letter written to the 
Christians in Rome at the end of this winter 
in Corinth, it appears that Paul planned 
next to establish a mission in Spain, and 



hoped to use the Roman church as a base of 
supplies, Also during all this general period 
of his work money was being collected in 
all the Gentile churches from Galatia (i Cor. 
16: i) westward, as a conciliatory gift to 
the Jewish Christians in Jerusalem. Paul 
hoped by means of this expression of good 
will to bind the Jewish and Gentile churches 
together before he left this part of the world. 
If he could only be so fortunate as to see 
this result secured, he could with good 
courage undertake on the western edge of 
the world to finish his apostolic commission 
to the Gentiles of the Empire, and so be 
ready for his Lord's return (Rom. 15 : 18-33). 

THE PRISONER OF JESUS CHRIST 

Just at this critical period, when every 
ounce of energy and every minute of time 
seemed needed for this last and crowning 
work of his life, Paul suddenly found himself 
in prison. This was no new experience, 
for he had been in prisons oft, but this 
imprisonment dragged on finally through 
five long years. It began in the Roman 
barracks of Jerusalem, near which he was 

19 



rescued by Roman soldiers from the Jewish 
mob that was savagely pounding him to 
death in the street. The imprisonment 
continued for two years in Caesarea, included 
a perilous voyage to Italy with shipwreck, 
and two years more in Rome waiting for 
the decision of the Emperor, to whom he 
had, as a Roman citizen, made appeal. 

The reason for his countrymen's hatred 
of him was his old insistence that Gentiles 
need not become Jews in order to become 
Christians. The acceptance of Jesus' Mes- 
siahship had ceased to be a mortal sin in the 
eyes of orthodox Jews. They were even 
ready gladly to tolerate Christianity if, by 
requiring circumcision of its Gentile con- 
verts, it would allow itself to serve as a 
feeder for Judaism (Gal. 5: 11; 6: 12). But 
this perversion of Christianity Paul uncom- 
promisingly resisted. He would not allow 
Christianity to degenerate into a Jewish 
sect. He saw in it a world religion for which 
Judaism had been simply a temporary 
preparation, and in which Judaism must 
itself be merged. 

These dreary years in prison were, never- 
20 



theless, not the least fruitful in Paul's 
fruitful life. From his prison house, through 
his lieutenants and his letters, he effectively 
inspired Christians all over the empire to be 
true to Jesus Christ (Eph. 4:1; Col. 4: 18). 
His literary productions in this period have 
vastly eftriched the religious thought of the 
world. They consist of four letters, two 
to the Christians of Philippi and Colosse, 
the so-called Epistle to the Ephesians, and 
the beautiful personal note to Philemon. 

THE END 

How Paul's life ended the New Testament 
does not tell. The book of Acts does not 
give the result of his appeal to Caesar, but 
leaves him in the city of Rome after two 
years of imprisonment, during which time 
he had been " teaching the things of the 
Lord Jesus" with all his life-long 4 'boldness" 
(Acts 28:30, 31). No date in the life of 
Paul can be established with unquestioned 
exactness. Quite possibly these two years 
in Rome were 59-61. (So Turner in Hast- 
ings' Dictionary of the Bible, or a. d. 60-62, 
Ramsay.) There is some reason for sup- 

21 

1 



posing that these two years of prison life 
ended with Paul's release, and were followed 
by another period of missionary activity in 
which the East was revisited, according to 
the expectation expressed in Philippians 
and Philemon (Phil. 2 : 23, 24; Philemon 22), 
and the Spanish mission established. To 
this period would then be assigned the letter 
to Titus and the first of the two to Timothy. 
On this hypothesis Paul was arrested and 
brought to Rome as a prisoner a second 
time, during which imprisonment the second 
letter to Timothy was written, shortly before 
his death. In the year 64 or 65, after the 
great fire in Rome (by another reckoning 
in the year 67), he who for many years had 
"died daily," found himself finally facing a 
Roman headsman. The most famous 
Roman citizen who ever lived was about to 
die, sentenced by the most infamous of 
Rome's emperors. But something of far 
more profound significance was about to 
happen. The great apostle of Jesus Christ 
was about to pass into the unseen world, 
and make devoutly triumphant report to 
his Lord. 

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